Chapter One (no title)

this is the very first draft of the first chapter of a short story that i just started working on.

            Working at the Smith’s developing company was very unlike working at a coffee shop, a book store, or a clothing store. Ron imagined that at Delilah’s Coffee down the street, employees could relax and make coffee for themselves whenever they pleased. And even at Barnes and Noble or H&M, where employers are stricter with their employees, they could still put aside items and use their discount to purchase them or use the store’s facilities and equipment for their use, whatever that may be. At Smith’s, (where Ron had worked for about 5 or 6 years now developing pictures and film), it was awfully suspicious if you were caught developing your own work. First of all, it wasn’t allowed. However, that wasn’t really the primary concern if you were caught. People automatically assumed that you had something to hide. The thinking was that if you didn’t just get it developed somewhere else and you were willing to risk getting caught in the developing room without an assignment, something fishy was definitely going on.

            The actual darkroom is surprisingly big �" with the lights on, it looks like a small basement. It also feels like a basement, as the floors and walls are concrete. There’s a revolving door to go in and out, and after about the first year, Ron started counting exactly how many times, on average, he gets his fingers stuck in the door. There are many stations in the room �" about a dozen on each side. The right side of the room is specifically for developing pictures, and the left side specifically for developing films. However, this room is only the main darkroom. At Smith’s, there are quite a few rooms, and each one serves a different purpose. For example, if some editing needs to be done on a roll of film, there’s a whole room specifically for that use.

            Sometime around last month (on a Saturday or Sunday, Ron remembers that much), he was walking down a hall with a client looking for room 113, which to his knowledge, contained equipment for film editing. While walking down this precise hallway, Ron ran into Marcy, a girl he had met and known since he first started working at Smith’s. The hallways at Smith’s are particularly narrow, and Marcy was walking towards Ron. Rather than move to the far right, as most people have learned to do, he kept walking towards Marcy and then stopped.

            “Hi,” she stopped and smiled, crossing her arms. “What’s up?”

 Now he had to ask her something. Especially with the arm crossing, he couldn’t just smile and be on his way. He tried to conjure up what sort of random question he would need to ask her, but couldn’t think of anything valid. So instead he assumed it would be better to just do this:

            “You know what, there was something I wanted to ask you, I remember that much, but… I completely forgot!” A little weird, but a whole lot better than the normal, he figured that much.

            It’s hard to believe it, but Marcy ended up at Smith’s for the same reason as Ron: a love for movies. The film industry was the whole reason that Ron moved to southern California, and the same reason that Marcy moved from New York City to L.A. However, just like Ron had kind of ended up in the movie industry, but not really, he had kind of ended up in L.A., but not really. He had missed his target, and ended up living the same exact mundane life he had been living before the move. This little bit of information about the whole deal between New York City to Los Angeles, and a love for Wes Anderson and the Cohen Brothers is pretty much the extent of Ron’s knowledge of Marcy, her being a girl way out of his league. When it got to the point where Ron knew more about Marcy than she did about him, well, that was never a good sign. That is why, when the surreptitiously filmed movie appeared in his life, Ron couldn’t believe his eyes.

Author's Note

please tell me what you think!